NCAA 14 Dynasty House Rules
How to set up a realistic Long Term Coach Mode Dynasty
The goal of this guide is to explain how I set up a realistic simulation of college football while not giving myself unfair advantages or “cheesing” the game to create a dominant roster artificially. I will go into depth over a number of different topics in order to show why I make these decisions.
Coach Mode
I will be running this entire dynasty in coach mode. I have played this game on the hardest difficulty with the most difficult slider set, and I just cant stop myself from blowing the CPU out. This isn’t to say that I’m very good at this game, in fact I find the opposite is true. I can’t stop myself from using every cheese play in an option read offense in order to just score and score and score. I often super sim defense because I find it frustrating to constantly have to either dominate the cpu offense, or cheat myself by making the game unrealistic and unfair to create an artificial challenge. This leads me to missing half of the game, missing out on the moments my defensive players create that lead to great stories, big time interceptions, timely sacks, huge 3rd down stops and even kick and punt returns that can swing momentum in any game.
Using coach mode, I eliminate the frustration that comes from the games limitations. I can focus on the players and I can take the ego out of my play calling and attempt to put these players in positions to win games. Later in this guide I will go over sliders and difficulty settings that make the most out of this playstyle, but for now let's delve into more interesting topics.
Team Selection
In order to maintain integrity while selecting a program, I will not be choosing my team based on merely a 1 star program rating. Some of these programs have quality head coaches or highly touted coordinators that would not be replaced for a guy off the street, and I would find it odd for them to be simply gone from the world of college football because I decided to take his job.
Taking a trip over to wikipedia to sort college coaches by all time wins/losses/games played has provided me a list of potential jobs that have shown they will hire someone with little to no coaching experience to lead their program. This also provides an opportunity to potentially start in a more prestigious conference. That list is as follows:
- Baylor Bears - Big 12
- Old Dominion Monarchs - Conference USA
- Souther Miss Golden Eagles - Conference USA
- Akron Zips - MAC
- Fresno State Bulldogs - Mountain West
- New Mexico Lobos - Mountain West
- UNLV Rebels - Mountain West
- Washington Huskies - Pac 12
- Arkansas Razorbacks - SEC
I will be selecting my team from that list. I will look over all the variables, from roster construction (do they have the players that fit the system I want to run?) to depth, location, conference competition and even uniform quality.
I don’t plan on switching programs, or leaving for another school. The lure of this dynasty is building a program from the depths and enjoying the growth of a team that we build while adhering to strict House Rules which ramp up the difficulty. That being said, I hold out hope to be offered the job at either North Carolina or Ohio State. If either of those programs come knocking, I will go to the meeting and hear what they have to say.
Scouting
We will not be scouting any player for our program prior to them committing to our team.
This is probably the easiest way to ramp up our difficulty and ensure that we aren’t taking advantage of the CPU. We can use all the tools afforded to us to sort players by height, weight, strength and speed, but we will not be discovering ANY actual grades for ANY player until they are a member of our team. Even after they commit, we will not be scouting them. We will wait until the recruiting period is over, once we get the kids on campus, to determine what we have in our class.
We will not be permitted to talk any recruit in to coming back to school.
If their prerogative is to go to the NFL or to transfer for any reason, we will allow them to. They took a chance coming to a brand new head coach, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out for every player.
We will only be allowed to recruit the positions that we have players leaving from.
For instance, If we have 2 running backs leaving the program, be it graduation, turning pro or transferring, we can then sign 2 running backs. If we are recruiting 5 running backs, and we sign 2 of them, we immediately withdraw all interest from the remaining running backs on our board.
We will only offer to a player that is being pursued, or is offered by, another program.
We all know that there are a number of very good prospects that fall through the cracks. Typically in weeks 3 or 4 you can sort by lock percentage and see that there are a number of 4 and 5 star players that for whatever reason are not being pursued by larger schools. We will not be taking advantage of this, and instead we will consider these players ineligible, academically or otherwise.
We will only recruit players that have our program in their Top 10 schools.
This will ensure we’re not pursuing players unrealistically. When better players become interested in our program, we will be able to recruit better players. Seems like a simple way to bake in some natural challenges.
Scheduling
We will always let the CPU set our schedule. We will not alter it in anyway, to make it more or less difficult. This should create variety and surprise/suspense each season as we view the upcoming non-conference slate as well as building the natural rivalries within our conference.
Coach Mode Settings / Sliders
We will be starting at 0 for all coaching trees and we will never, throughout the course of our dynasty, reset our skill trees. As we cant scout, initially our focus will be on winning games, so we will probably build out the game day skills tree before the recruiting tree.
The line between adapting the system to your players and your players to your system is blurry. I have a very specific play style that I want to bring with me to whichever program I choose. That being said, if we happen to have a transcendent talent, we will utilize them in ways to help us take advantage of their ability. It is, after all, my job to win games, so each season will will adjust not only the plays that we call but our formation subs to make sure we have the right guys in the right spots.
I want to run the ball and throw play action, and I don’t want my QB leading the team in carries in an ideal situation. Therefore I will be recruiting Pocket Style QB’s. If we don’t have any pocket style qb’s interested, then we may go outside the box, but that is the style I prefer to have under center.
Sliders:
Set these for both user and CPU, to ensure nothing wacky happens.
QB Accuracy - 5
This is important because at any other accuracy above 5 and 90% of passes are completed. At 0, 30% of passes are completed. This slider is not perfect, but it is the most accurate to real life percentages I have found after years of testing.
Pass Blocking - 55
We will be monitoring this value for the first season and may make a change if necessary. The way that NCAA CPU QB ai works, the exact moment that the block shed animation happens, the QB reacts. They have to do “something”. With scrambling and balanced style qb’s, when no block shed occurs, they sit in the pocket and read the defense, but as soon as that animation happens, they are triggered to react and by and large that means taking off to run. With pocket style qb’s, while they will sometimes take off with the ball, but they typically hang in the pocket and look for someone to get open. This is not game breaking, but it IS the hardest thing to get right in the game. Too much pass rush and the game script goes out the window. Too little pass rush and no one gets sacked ever. We will monitor and see what happens.
WR Catching - 40
Another slider value to adjust completion percentage. This makes for both contested and wide open drops, which happen occasionally in actual college football.
RB Ability - 60
Another value we will monitor. The issue with this value is that no matter how high it is, the ball carriers simply don’t use juke moves… ever. This value seems to make the rb’s slip tackles more, which in lieu of actual jukes, is what we’re looking for.
Run Blocking - 40
The o-line tends to create massive holes even on the higher difficulty settings. We lower this value to create a more realistic YPC average.
Pass Coverage - 95
This is the third and final slider aimed directly at making completion percentage stay realistic. The tighter coverage will provide more of a challenge on crossers and slants.
Interceptions - 25
Tighter coverage means more opportunities, and so lowering this value makes some interceptions happen, while allowing some swatted passes to not immediately be turnovers. I may even reduce this further, depending on the number of season long interceptions are seen.
Rush Defense - 40
The CPU tends to “know” when a run is about to happen and immediately crash the line of scrimmage. Lowering this value gives a bit more time for holes to develop.
Tackling - 35
Missed tackles are something that happens a lot in college ball, and this value ensures we have some variety in the tackling animations. We have to help the RB's a bit as they don't use juke moves ever.
FG Power - 50
This value is dead on, showing an accurate representation of leg strength, or at worst it’s negligible.
FG Accuracy - 30
If they made a setting like 2K with “true shot accuracy” where it just gave kickers percentage based animations, i’d turn it on and never turn it off. We’re lowering this value to make it seem like there is a difference between stud kickers and poor kickers, and make it so that every field goal is stressful. We will monitor percentages after year one and see if we should adjust this value.
Punt Power - 30
Punt Accuracy - 75
We’re all aware that the physics on punts are screwy in this title, and one of the most glaring holes in the game. Thats a compliment by the way, because ball physics on punting being one of the larger issues in a game means there is a LOT right with this game. That being said, any punt that hits the ground immediately shoots straight backwards. There are no high hops, screwball bounces or irregular directions. It goes exactly where you put it, every single time. So we will take the power down to create less opportunity for 90 yard punts, and make the accuracy higher because 1, punters are people too and they’re good at what they do, and 2, errant punts are no fun to watch and rarely happen.
Gameplay Settings
Offensive and Defensive Skill - All American
Injuries ON
Fatigue ON - I wish there was a slider that we could adjust here to ensure back up touches
Quarter Length - 9 min typically ensures around 120 plays per game.
Play clock ON
Coaching Tips - Your preference
Game Speed - NORMAL - Slow looks better but it cause unnatural hitches in the running and catching animations making the game un-playable on anything other than normal.
Speed Threshold - 0
You have to have this on 0, let the players ratings tell the story. If you have a 99 speed guy, he should feel like it, and if you have a 72 speed MLB, he shouldnt be catching 92 speed wr’s.
Penalties
Offsides - 91
False Start - 91
Holding - 50
Facemask - 50
OPI - 99
DPI - 99
KR/
PR INT - 60
Clipping - 30
Int Grounding - 54
Roughing the Passer - 54
Ice The Kicker / Home Field Advantage - OFF
Too arcade-ish for me. Inaccurately inflates and deflates ratings, don’t over think this just turn it off you’ll be happier.
And thats it! Thanks for reading this far, please feel free to comment and tell me which school you’d like to see me choose from the list above, and if you’d enjoy watching the games on youtube if I decide to post these!
09-26-2020, 05:13 PM
